


(I'm quite all right) hiding tonight

by hollyanneg



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam doesn't go to Aglionby, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Deaf Character, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 23:35:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20750642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyanneg/pseuds/hollyanneg
Summary: Pynch Prompt Week 2019, Day 1: Soulmate AUBased on the quote, "Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place."





	(I'm quite all right) hiding tonight

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Ronan who is processing his grief a little differently, maybe in part because of his dream-boy.

When Ronan was little, his mother had a cross-stitched quote hanging on the wall of her kitchen. _Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place._

When he was five, he asked her what a soulmate was. She said, “It’s someone who looks the same on the inside as you do.”

When he was eight, he asked her what that quote even _meant,_ Mom, _seriously._ She said, “If your souls match, my darling, then so will your habits.”

When he was eleven, she caught him staring at it again and laughed the way she did when she had a secret. She pulled him in close to her and whispered, “Ronan, it’s true. Most people don’t believe in soulmates—not everyone has them—but those who do always find them in their special hiding places.”

He was never sure if she meant that literally or not. Not until he was sixteen, and she was asleep, and he couldn’t ask her anything anymore. He had begun to unravel all of his parents’ secrets after they were gone, and it occurred to him that his parents had indeed found each other in a hidden place—his father’s mind.

This was the only secret he had known before—that he and his father could take things out of their dreams. He had known this about himself since he was old enough to remember his dreams. He’d known this about his father since the morning that he lingered in his parents’ doorway, looking at his father prostrate on the bed, blood and flower petals on his face, and had the distinct thought that _those things came out of his mind._

When he was sixteen, and his mother was asleep, he realized that she was also one of the things that had come out of Niall Lynch’s mind.

And then he realized, he had already met his soulmate.

For as long as he could remember, the same boy had come into Ronan’s dreams repeatedly and spoken with him there. It wasn’t every night—it tended to happen more often around solstices and equinoxes. And it had happened less since Ronan’s father had died. It was tempting to say that everything had gone wrong at once—that he’d lost everything, including his dream companion, all at once. The truth was that Ronan’s mind had become more disordered, his dreaming more disturbed. Either the boy wanted to stay away from such chaos, or Ronan was no longer able to draw him into dreams because Ronan had lost some of his control of the dream world.

Ronan had another dream companion—a little girl with goat hooves who guided him through this shadow-realm that not even he understood and helped him fight the night horrors that came more and more frequently. He was aware that he had created the little girl because he needed that guidance. The boy was different. He didn’t seem to be there for any particular purpose. They talked about anything and everything. Some nights they didn’t talk at all, just sat in comfortable silence. When Ronan had suggested that the boy was a figment of his imagination, the boy had been indignant.

“I’m real!” he’d said. “You’re in _my_ dreams.”

“No, you’re in mine,” said Ronan.

“I have a life outside of this,” the boy insisted. “Maybe I invented you.”

“I have a life, too,” said Ronan. He thought, but didn’t say, that his dreams were much more powerful than most people’s, so it was way more likely that he’d created the boy than the other way around.

Eventually, though, he was convinced that the boy was real. The boy told him things about his life that Ronan didn’t think he could’ve invented, not even in his fantastical sleep-state. Things like, “I won a stuffed beaver at the county fair last year” and “my best Christmas present ever was a bag of hard candy” and “I can’t hear out of my left ear.” These were all depressing facts, and if Ronan had actually invented this boy, the facts would have been more like “I can turn my feet into roller blades at will” or “I can talk to animals, especially bears” or “I have detachable ears and can eavesdrop on anyone, like in Harry Potter.”

The boy did talk about other, non-depressing things. He didn’t say much about his family, but he talked about school and his neighbor’s dog and places he wanted to go, and in return, Ronan talked a lot about his family and all the animals on their farm. The boy sighed with jealousy and said that he wished he could meet all of them, family and animals alike.

Another thing that separated the boy from the hooved girl—and thus from things Ronan had made—was that Ronan never really saw him properly. That is, he had the sense that he could see the boy’s face while he was still asleep, but he could never remember what it looked like after he woke up.

When he was sixteen and figuring things out, he thought, _if the boy is real and the boy is my soulmate, then I can meet him. I don’t have to be alone._

This was one bright spot amid so much darkness.

He wasn’t sure how to find someone whose name and face he didn’t know. His one advantage was that he was absolutely certain he’d know the boy’s voice anywhere.

The boy came again to his dreams a few weeks after this revelation. It was only the third time he’d appeared since Ronan’s father’s death. Ronan had not yet told him about that. For the first couple of weeks, that had been the only thing he’d wanted to do—disappear into his dreams and cry on the dream-boy’s shoulder. But the boy had taken so long to reappear.

This time, Ronan asked, “Where have you been? I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“I don’t control this any more than you do,” said the boy. He was apparently in one of his sulky moods. These moods were usually accompanied by a heavy dose of sarcasm, which Ronan would’ve loved if only it was directed at someone else.

He also still suspected that he _could_ wield some control over all this if he tried. This was what led to his next idea.

“Do you want to come to my house?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” the boy asked, still grumpy but obviously interested.

“I told you before that I can take things out of my dreams.” The boy had been skeptical about that, and Ronan didn’t really have a way to prove it when he was _in_ a dream.

“Right…” said the boy.

“What if I tried to take you out of my dream? Then we could hang out for real and not have to worry about it ending when we wake up.” That was always the worst thing—being pulled out of a conversation abruptly, with no way of knowing how soon they’d see each other again. They had both complained about that before.

“I’m real, though,” said the boy. “Can’t you only take things out if you made them?”

“I don’t know,” said Ronan. “I’ve never tried anything else.”

“Sounds dangerous,” said the boy.

“Live a little,” said Ronan. He got an eye-roll for that.

“You’d have to like… move me. Like, my molecules. Rearrange them or something.”

“Nerd,” said Ronan. “It’d be like teleporting. I just pick you up from your house and put you into mine.”

The boy still seemed doubtful, but there was an excited spark in his eyes. “If you take me out, can you put me back? Because if my parents wake up and I’m not home, I’ll be in trouble.” 

“I could try,” said Ronan. “If we tried to dream back into this space together, then maybe we’d both wake up in our own houses.”

“How do we dream together?”

“I don’t know. We’d be in the same place. We could, like, hold hands or something.” Ronan blushed deeply and hoped that was less obvious in the dream-world than in reality.

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” said the dream-boy. Ronan scoffed. “But I want to try it anyway,” the boy added.

So Ronan examined the boy carefully, because he had to be able to picture something just as it was to bring it out of a dream. He willed himself to remember the lines of that face, the light in those eyes. He took one of the boy’s large-knuckled hands and told himself to wake up.

He woke up alone.

There were several good things about being friends with Gansey. The ones Ronan currently appreciated the most: 1. Gansey had been the only one protecting Ronan from himself for the past couple of months. 2. Gansey was incredibly distracting.

Ronan had a lot of things he wanted to be distracted from. They went in this order: 1. Losing his parents. 2. Not being able to bring his soulmate out of a dream. 3. Being betrayed by his own brother. Declan stepping in and trying to parent him even though he was only a year older. Not to mention enforcing the unbelievable clause in their father’s will: that they were no longer allowed to live in their own home. 

It was an unforgivably hot day in July when Gansey decided that he wanted to drive up to a tiny town near the West Virginia border called Montlake. Gansey was eternally searching for an ancient Welsh king who he believed was buried in Virginia and might not actually be dead. He was having trouble narrowing down possible grave sites to anything more specific than “this entire section of the state.” He kept chasing useless clues, and this was probably another one—the tiny town had a tiny museum of artifacts and oddities that had been found in the area. Mostly arrowheads and Civil War cannonballs and things like that. But Gansey was hoping that among all that there might be some clue, some odd Welsh coin or a 12th century horseshoe.

Ronan was willing to go along, because it was a distraction. They drove more than an hour up the Highland Turnpike—curvy, mountainous terrain. They had the windows down in Gansey’s old Camaro because the A/C had decided not to work that day. Ronan made sure to complain about it as much as possible.

It was too hot for anything. It was too hot for a museum. Ronan gave up on looking at musket balls after a few minutes and left Gansey talking to the museum curator, a retired history professor, about possible pre-Columbian European influences in the area.

He walked down the main street of the town and took in all the empty storefronts. At the end of the street, there was an auto repair place on one side and a park on the other. The park was a small patch of grass with a walkway through it, two benches facing each other, and a bronze statue of some lady.

One bench was occupied. Ronan took the other. They were both, mercifully, shaded by a couple of poplars.

The guy on the bench was maybe Ronan’s age or maybe a little younger. He wore coveralls and held a book in front of his face. Sitting next to him was a lunch bag.

The guy lowered the book and produced an apple from his bag, held the book on his lap and continued to read as he ate.

Ronan glanced.

Ronan glanced again.

And then he wasn’t glancing, he was staring.

This guy had a furrowed brow that Ronan wanted to know more about. It suggested worry. What was he so worried about? There was a hollowness to his face. There was a grace in the way he was holding himself, despite the car grease on his clothes.

As if he could feel Ronan’s gaze on him, he glanced up sharply. Shocking, deep-set blue eyes that looked unhappy to be seen. He went back to reading.

Ronan made himself look away for a minute. When it felt safe, he resumed staring. Tanned skin that looked like it’d be warm to the touch. Long fingers on boyish hands. This guy was so strange to look at. Strange in the most appealing way.

Ronan was too struck by this to react to it. The guy gave him another annoyed look, a look that said _I know you’re staring, and it’s not cool._ But after a few more minutes, he picked up the remnants of his lunch and stood to leave. He gave Ronan a short nod as he passed by, heading across the street to the garage.

He must have been on break. At least he wasn’t leaving because of Ronan’s staring.

Ronan was extremely preoccupied for the next week. 1. Because he wanted to tell his soulmate that they were soulmates. 2. Because he couldn’t get the guy from Montlake out of his head. He kept picturing him. Not just reading on the bench, like before, but in lots of different scenarios. Laughing. Eating. Riding in Ronan’s car. Fixing Ronan’s car. Wiping sweat off his brow while holding a wrench. Holding Ronan’s hand…

This was so distracting that Ronan didn’t need Gansey to be distracting for a solid six days. He did, however, confess to Gansey about his soulmate theory one night when neither of them could sleep. Gansey already knew about Ronan’s dreaming—it had been difficult to hide once a horror-movie bird-man had manifested in Ronan’s room and started tearing the place apart. Now, Ronan told Gansey about the dream-boy and hiding places and his desperate desire to know this boy in real life. Gansey was fascinated, as he was by all outlandish theories. “If he’s a real person, then it’s a simple as choosing a time and place to meet,” he said.

But Ronan’s ability to make plans with the boy was partially out of his control.

With his soulmate MIA yet again, Ronan decided on a whim to drive to Montlake by himself. It was Saturday, a week after they’d gone before. Ronan told himself that he was just going for something to do. An excuse for a long drive. And if he happened to see that guy again because it just so happened that he was working on a Saturday again and maybe felt like eating lunch in the park again… Well, that would be a coincidence.

It wasn’t a coincidence that he parked at the museum and walked straight down the street to the park. He planted himself on the opposite bench this time, the one that afforded him a view of the garage. A car came. Another left. A breeze ruffled the branches of the tree above him.

The guy came out of the shop.

He came across the street, and when he looked at Ronan, there was a flash of recognition in his eyes. He nodded, like before. Sat down. Took what looked like a cheese sandwich out of his bag. Produced a book from somewhere and started to read.

Ronan had not seen the book’s title the first time, and he didn’t now, but it looked heavy and solid, with a sober, dark cover. Something serious. Who read that kind of thing on their lunch break? …Someone Ronan wanted to know, if he was being honest.

The guy’s shaggy hair flopped down in front of one eye, and he pushed it back with an impatient huff. Ronan imagined doing the same thing. It’d probably be soft…

He tried to think about something else…

And came back to that hair. Fine and dusty-colored, between brown and blond.

Ronan decided he’d call the guy Dusty—privately, of course—until he knew the guy’s actual name. If he ever did.

By the time Dusty went back to work—without looking at Ronan this time—Ronan was ready to admit to himself that he thought the guy was beautiful. And that he would probably come to Montlake again.

It was that same night that the dream-boy came again.

Ronan was able to stop thinking about Dusty right away. Before hello, he said to the boy, “I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” said the dream-boy.

From this word alone, Ronan could tell that the boy was in one of his quietly affable moods. Ronan could work with that.

They sat under a tree together, one of the sprawling ones that populated the landscape of Ronan’s dreams. Something like a live oak, with long, twisting arms.

Ronan told the boy, “I think you’re my soulmate.”

If the boy was surprised, he didn’t say so. “Why do you think that?” he asked.

He explained the quote, about soulmates having the same hiding places. “Someone told me it’s true,” he said.

“I don’t come here to hide,” said the boy. “I don’t even try to come here, it just happens.”

“It’s not that literal,” said Ronan, fondly exasperated. “The idea is that your soulmate is going to be in a place that you love to go to, because they love it too.”

“I don’t know if that’s what happening with us,” said the boy.

“An inexplicable psychic link that brings us to each other’s dreams? You don’t think that could mean that we’re soulmates?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” said the boy. He went silent for a bit, lost in thought, like he often was. Ronan sat and thought about his parents, who’d also met in dreams. Where did other people, normal people, meet? His mother made it sound like this idea applied to anyone with a soulmate, not just dreamers. He wished he could ask her.

And the boy’s next question was, “Who told you about all this, anyway?”

“My mother,” he said.

“Oh, how is your mother?” said the boy, like he’d been meaning to ask.

_Gone._

He finally told the boy the truth—his father’s murder and his mother’s eternal sleep, the rift between the brothers, the loss of his home. He told the boy about racing his car and drinking too much, anything that might make it hurt less. He told the boy about his endless, directionless rage, and about so many sleepless nights, and about the horrors that came on other nights.

And the boy held onto him while he screamed, his body wracked with tears or vomit that never quite came. The boy didn’t say anything to try to make it better. He just held on tight.

When Ronan was calm again, he said in wonder, “They never come when you’re here. The night horrors. You must keep them away.”

The boy said, “I’m glad if I can help a little.”

“You do help,” said Ronan.

This was one of the nights when the dreamscape saw fit to give them more time together. They sat quietly because they could. A little later, the boy, contemplative, asked, “Are soulmates always romantic?”

The question burned into Ronan’s soul. It had never occurred to him to ask his dream-boy a question so prosaic as “Do you like men or women?”

“I don’t know,” he said. They’d known each other for so long, he felt safe enough saying, “If it’s you, I hope it’s romantic.”

“You don’t even know me,” said the boy, but there was a smile in his voice.

“You know me better than anyone does,” said Ronan. He turned towards the boy and thought about trying to kiss him. What would kissing be like in a dream? Gossamer and insubstantial? Or would it be as real as anywhere else?

The boy didn’t kiss him, but he did hold Ronan’s hand until they both woke up.

All the next day, Ronan had kissing on the brain, and he was dying to try it that night, so naturally the boy didn’t come. Not that night, or the next, or the next…

So Ronan went to see Dusty again.

This time it was a Wednesday, so he wasn’t holding his breath that Dusty would be at the park. And sure enough, he wasn’t. Ronan wandered around the town instead. It was only about four streets, so it didn’t take long. He went around a second time. He lingered on a street corner, and some lady came out of a shop to yell at him for loitering.

It was his third time around, and he was about to give up, when suddenly, there was Dusty, coming around the corner on a bike. He gave Ronan one puzzled glance and then waved—actually _waved_—as he whizzed by.

This felt like progress.

He didn’t count the Saturdays until he realized that it had been more than a month, and he’d gone to Montlake every single weekend. Dusty was reliably always there, eating lunch. Ronan started bringing a lunch too, to make it less awkward. He tried to stop being so obvious with his staring, but the whole point of going was to admire Dusty’s odd loveliness for half an hour or so.

Dusty started to look at him, too. Not annoyed glances like that first day, but curious ones. Sometimes it seemed like he wanted to speak, but he never did. The longer Dusty went without speaking, the harder it was for Ronan to think of anything to say. One day, he said hello and felt like he’d explode from the anxiety of it. Dusty nodded in return and smiled, a soft, timid thing Ronan hadn’t seen before. He still didn’t speak, but that smile was worth the stress of being the first one to say something.

Still, this was a problem. What was the point of going up there every weekend if they were never going to speak to each other?

Ronan’s love life, like every other part of his life, was a crushing disappointment. The dream-boy had only appeared once that month, and they hadn’t kissed or talked about being soulmates. The boy had been sad that night, but he wouldn’t say why. He’d asked for a hug that, instead of ending, had turned into some kind of odd, upright cuddling for the entire length of the dream. It was kind of nice. But. 

In the meantime, school had started back, and it felt more pointless and soul-sucking than ever. Ronan only managed to drag himself to class because he had Mother Gansey hovering and wringing his hands about it. The only good thing that happened in the first month of school was that they met Noah, a quiet, smudgy boy they’d somehow never noticed in class before.

“It’s because I’m a ghost,” he told them. Noah had a weird sense of humor, and Ronan decided he liked it a lot. 

It was Ronan’s seventh Saturday in a row of going to Montlake when Dusty finally stood him up. In his place was a folded-up piece of notebook paper with _BMW boy_ written on it. Ronan was a little pleased that Dusty had noticed his car. He unfolded the paper, and the note said:

_I had somewhere else to be today, but I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten our weekly meeting. I don’t know why you’re always here, but I’ve started to look forward to it. So, see you next Saturday? – Adam_

__

__

_Adam, Adam, Adam._ Ronan turned the name over in his mind. How had he ever not known that the guy’s name was Adam? It seemed like the only possible name for him. How had he come up with something as dumb as Dusty?

_Adam_ looked forward to seeing him every week. Ronan would definitely be there next Saturday.

The dream-boy came again on Tuesday. It had been a particularly black day for Ronan, and at the beginning of the dream, he hadn’t felt much like talking. But the dream-boy was good at coaxing conversation from Ronan no matter what mood he was in. He peppered Ronan with questions, good-natured questions designed to distract him from his misery. Things like, “How many licks do you think it actually takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” He demanded a well-reasoned answer.

Later, when he was out of ridiculous questions, he asked the more mundane, “Any big plans this week?”

Ronan had only one plan. “I’m meeting someone on Saturday.”

“Who’s that?”

“A friend.” He didn’t feel like explaining. He suspected that his usually-rational dream companion would not understand the fruitless pursuit of Adam.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Eat lunch. We’ve been doing this a lot lately, having lunch together on Saturdays.”

“Is this Gansey?” the boy asked.

Ronan was so pathetic. Even his dream-boy knew that he only had one actual friend. “No, not Gansey. Someone I met recently.” The boy gestured for him to go on. “I don’t know, he’s just this really attractive guy, and he reads big books, and I like looking at him. And we eat lunch together. I don’t know. It’s not a thing.”

“Do you want it to be a thing? Do you like him?” The boy sighed at the thought. 

Ronan contemplated whether or not it was mean to make his soulmate jealous (that had not been his original intention) and whether or not it was weird to have a crush on someone who was not his soulmate. It seemed wrong, somehow. Especially when he knew nothing about Adam and everything about the dream-boy, including the fact that he’d recently taken on a third part-time job, which seemed crazy and borderline self-destructive to Ronan, who knew a lot about self-destruction. Ronan wanted to whisk the dream-boy away from his grim and grueling reality. Or wanted to be whisked away himself…

Ronan took the risk—because this was only a dream, after all—of saying, “Maybe I wouldn’t like him so much if I knew you in real life.”

The boy perked up at this. “We could try to meet—if you actually believe me that I’m real.”

Ronan did, and he would abandon Silent Adam quickly enough if he had his soulmate in front of him instead.

“Where do you live?” he asked eagerly. “I can come to you—you wouldn’t even have to worry about it.”

The boy hemmed and hawed and finally said cryptically, “The place I live is barely even a place. I can’t afford to go very far, but maybe we could meet in-between.” Before Ronan could process this, the boy added, “You’re American, aren’t you? You sound American.”

“Yeah,” said Ronan. “And you’re Southern, aren’t you? That’s convenient, because I live in Virginia.”

The boy was silent for a little too long, and when he spoken again, that tell-tale Southern accent had disappeared entirely. “I live in Virginia, too,” he said.

_Eager_ wasn’t a strong enough word. “You do? How have we never met before?”

“Virginia’s a big state,” said the boy.

“Which part are you in? North? South? By the beach?”

“Northwest,” said the boy.

“Me too. This is perfect!” Ronan was not bothering to hide his enthusiasm. He rarely did in dreams, because this boy had known him since his ebullient childhood. He couldn’t really fake coolness with someone who knew him so well.

The boy was not equally excited. Quietly, he said, “I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Maybe you’d be disappointed with me if we met in real life.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Ronan with certainty.

This was the MOST inopportune time for his alarm clock to go off, but it did. He tried to sink himself back into the dream, but that proved to be impossible. He went to school resenting it even more than normal.

Fortunately, the autumnal equinox was near, and the boy came again that night. Ronan didn’t bother with greetings. “So, about meeting. Please don’t say no.”

“I feel better about it today,” said the boy. “Do you think you’d like me no matter what?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Ronan asked, though not unkindly. “I already know you. I already like you.”

The boy gave him a skeptical look, but he just said, “I’m over in Montlake.”

Ronan couldn’t believe it—tiny Montlake, where he’d been so many times that summer to see Adam? His soulmate might have been so close by, without either of them realizing it.

“But you don’t have to come out there,” said the boy. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not close to anything.”

Ronan was opening his mouth to say that he didn’t care—that he liked driving—when the boy added, “Could I meet you in some place like Charlottesville?”

Ronan did some math. “Henrietta might be closer for you.”

“Oh, it is,” said the boy, a little surprised.

“That’s where I live,” said Ronan, because why be coy?

“Oh,” the boy breathed, “that’s so close to me.”

“Crazy, right?”

“Crazy.”

“Will you get in trouble with your parents for going somewhere?” The only thing Ronan knew about the boy’s parents was that he had some, but he remembered the boy saying _if my parents wake up and I’m not home, I’ll be in trouble._

The boy looked pointedly away from him and said, “I don’t live with them anymore.”

Ronan was shocked. “Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“How old are you?” He’d always assumed the boy was his age, but normal 16-year-olds with living parents lived at home.

“Seventeen,” said the boy. “So where are we meeting?”

Ronan let it go, and they made a plan to meet at Nino’s—because that was the only semi-respectable place Ronan ever went to—the following Sunday at noon.

Ronan would _not_ have taken Gansey for moral support, as Gansey suggested, but then it turned out that Noah wanted to go there for lunch that day anyway. Ronan sat with them and didn’t touch the pizza because he was too nervous. He was playing this off by being more taciturn than usual. He positioned himself so that he could see the door. 

He would recognize his soulmate. He was sure. He didn’t remember the face, but he would know the voice. He would know the energy, the presence of the boy from his dreams.

Adam walked in.

Ronan was momentarily surprised, and then happy, to see him. This was quickly replaced with anxiety. Now was not the time for Adam to suddenly speak. What if the soulmate walked in and saw Ronan talking to someone else? Potentially disastrous.

Adam saw him, though, and he looked just as surprised, but then he smiled that shy smile that Ronan adored. He waved a little. Ronan nodded back. Adam took a seat, but he kept looking at Ronan and made a motion like he might come over.

Only then, the tiny waitress who was slightly rude whenever they had her went to take Adam’s order. She blocked Ronan’s view of him, but Ronan kept looking that way anyway, and Noah took note and started staring as well.

When the waitress walked back to the kitchen window, Noah said, “I like her hair. It’s so spiky. I wish I could touch it.”

“You like her hair?” said Gansey, twisting around to look. “It is quite unusual.”

“Quite,” said Noah.

“Do you think she’s cute?” Gansey asked. Ronan rolled his eyes at this conversation and kept looking back and forth between Adam and the door.

“I mean, yeah, definitely,” said Noah.

“You should go talk to her,” said Gansey.

“Uh, I’m not doing that.”

They argued about it for a minute. Meanwhile, two more men had come in. One was middle-aged. One was very attractive and wearing motorcycle boots, but definitely looked older than seventeen. Probably not Ronan’s soulmate.

Adam was slowly nursing a Coke and looking around the room curiously.

Ronan only tuned back into the conversation when Gansey stood up from their table and announced, “I guess I have to do everything myself.”

“Gansey, don’t!” Noah called after him. 

But Gansey marched right up to the kitchen window where the tiny waitress was writing something on a notepad. She didn’t look thrilled to be interrupted. They talked for a minute, and then Ronan heard, loud and clear, “I am _not_ a prostitute!”

Ronan laughed out loud. Noah turned even paler than normal and hissed, “What in the world did he say to her?”

Adam, like everyone else in the restaurant, was watching this disaster unfold. Gansey seemed to be trying to placate the waitress. He came back to their table, beet-red, and said, “That did not go as planned.”

“You don’t say,” said Ronan.

“I was badly misunderstood.”

“Gansey, you did not need to do that,” said Noah, who’d sunk down in the booth like he was trying to hide.

“Well you weren’t going to do it. I was just trying to help you out.”

“I can’t date anyone!” Noah said, wide-eyed. “I’m not even alive!”

“You shouldn’t put yourself down like that,” said Gansey.

They bickered for another few minutes, and Ronan forgot to watch the door because he was egging them on. When he remembered to look up again, Adam was gone, and no more teenaged boys had come in.

They left half an hour later. The day was a bust.

So the following week was even more pointless than most. He was pissed at the dream-boy for not coming—but also a little worried in case something bad had happened. He didn’t bother to go to Montlake that Saturday. If Adam wasn’t even going to talk to him when they ran into each other in a completely different town, then Ronan was done. 

Maybe. Probably. He felt a little guilty, though.

Gansey had ventured back to Nino’s to try to apologize to the girl (he’d called her “the devil waitress” and Noah had said, “Don’t call her that when you’re apologizing”). She had apparently accepted it well enough, because she let him walk her home that day, only for her psychic family to identify Gansey as a boy the waitress was destined to meet.

Gansey was relatively unfazed by this.

“I was thinking about your soulmate theory,” he told Ronan. “Do you think Nino’s could be considered a hiding place?”

“Why the fuck not,” said Ronan.

The dream-boy made his next appearance ten days after they’d been supposed to meet. Ronan tried to tamp down his anger until the boy explained himself. But he didn’t explain. He just sat sullenly a few feet away from Ronan, refusing to speak. Ronan ventured closer and tried to annoy him into talking—poking him repeatedly and singing the most obnoxious songs he could think of. This only earned him a few glares before the boy refused to look at him at all.

Finally Ronan sat back on his heels and, exasperated, said, “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you so mad at me? You’re the one who stood _me_ up.”

The boy whipped his head around, eyes blazing. “I did not! _You’re_ the one who didn’t come!”

“I sure as fuck did,” said Ronan. “I sat there and waited, and I never saw you. Are you sure you had the date right?”

“Sunday the 29th at noon,” the boy said.

That was correct. “At Nino’s,” said Ronan.

“At Nino’s,” the boy confirmed. “I was there.”

“Shit,” said Ronan. “We were both there and we missed each other?”

“I guess,” said the boy, no longer angry. “I didn’t stay too long because I couldn’t really afford to buy a meal there. But I hung around across the street after that just in case. I never saw anyone I thought was you.”

“But you don’t remember my face either,” said Ronan.

“No…”

“We’re idiots. We’re going to need to meet somewhere even more specific. Or somewhere no one else would go.”

“Sketchy,” said the boy.

“Whatever. I want this to work.” 

Ronan sat and tried to think of a place, and then the boy said, “Would it help if we knew each other’s names?”

They’d never talked about names. It had never really seemed to matter in their private dream-world where they were always alone. They’d skipped over a lot of obvious details about themselves in favor of more interesting topics.

“We could make one of those signs that people hold up at airports,” the boy joked. “You know, like a chauffeur. So we don’t miss each other again.”

“My name’s Ronan. Ronan Lynch.”

The boy laughed, a lovely sound.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, that’s just the perfect name for you. I’m Adam.”

“What?” Had Ronan heard him correctly?

“Adam,” he repeated.

_“What?”_

“Is there something wrong with that?” the boy asked, huffy.

Now Ronan felt even stupider. It had just seemed way too convenient that his crush and his soulmate could be the same person. He hadn’t even let himself consider it. “Are you the Adam who works at the auto repair shop in Montlake? Across the street from the park?”

“Yes,” said the boy. “How do you—wait a second. Holy shit. You aren’t—are you?”

“I’m BMW boy,” said Ronan.

The dream-boy—Adam—sat with his mouth hanging open for a minute. “I didn’t realize,” he said softly.

“Me neither.”

“Wait a minute. So when you were talking about the attractive guy you eat lunch with on Saturdays, that was me?”

“Yes,” said Ronan, sheepish.

“Oh, wow. I was so envious of myself. I even thought maybe that guy was the reason you didn’t come to meet me… How ironic.” Adam smiled at him. “You really think I’m attractive?”

“Obviously,” said Ronan. “But I’m not going to tell you again. It’ll just go to your head.” (He definitely would tell Adam again—probably over and over and in great detail.)

Adam laughed at him again. “Do you want to meet at our usual place, then? Maybe after I get off work, so we can actually hang out for a while?”

“Sounds great,” said Ronan. “As long as you actually talk to me this time.”

After a pause, Adam said, “You never talk to me either.” He sounded much more subdued than a moment earlier.

“I said hello… It got weird, didn’t it?” said Ronan. He could see Adam emotionally retreating and wanted to bring him back. “The longer we didn’t talk, the harder it was to start.”

“Do you remember when I told you I couldn’t hear out of my left ear?” Adam asked abruptly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, now I can’t hear at all. That’s why I don’t live with my parents anymore.” 

Ronan mentally scrambled to process this, but Adam kept going, looking steadily over Ronan’s right shoulder in an oddly detached way. 

“And that’s why I didn’t talk to you. This just happened recently, and I’m still learning how to communicate with people when I can’t hear them. I don’t even know sign language yet. It’s a lot of people just writing things out for me, and I feel weird about it. I feel weird that I don’t know what my voice sounds like anymore. I’m always afraid of being too loud. And you—first you were some random stranger who watched me eat lunch, but then I thought you were handsome, and I wanted to see you every week and get to know you, but it was just… scary. Not to mention that the dream version of you also wanted to meet me, and I was nervous to explain all this to you in person. Nervous that you’d be disappointed.”

Ronan didn’t really know how to start responding to all that, but it seemed like the most important thing to say was— “I’m not disappointed. You’re you. I want to know you no matter what.”

Adam made a choked noise and threw himself into Ronan’s arms, and they stayed like that for a while.

When it seemed appropriate, Ronan asked very quietly, “Are you saying that your parents did this to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” said Adam, stiff.

“But have they always—”

“Yes.”

“You never said.” That was about all Ronan could say as he tried not to explode with anger that someone had hurt Adam, had been hurting him for years—

“Why would I bring that into my dreams?” Adam asked. “This was the place I escaped to, even if I couldn’t control my comings and goings. I guess in that way, you were right. This was my hiding place. You never seemed to be able to see my bruises. To you, I wasn’t Adam the abuse victim. I could be anybody. I mean, I can even still hear you here.”

“Yeah, you can,” said Ronan, still trying to calm down.

“This really doesn’t make a difference to you?” Adam looked up at him from under his shaggy hair, doubtful.

“No,” said Ronan, certain. “You aren’t worth less because somebody hurt you. Please, can we still meet?”

“Yes,” said Adam.

Ronan came out of his room in the morning and said, “Gansey, I need to learn ASL. And maybe teach it to someone else.”

Gansey looked up from the book he’d been reading, blinking sleepily. “Okay, well there’s probably YouTube tutorials or something else like that online.”

“Is there a fucking book or something?” Ronan wanted something tangible to take to Adam when he saw him.

He was still reeling from Adam being the dream-boy and from the realization that he didn’t know his dream-boy as well as he’d thought. He knew that his dream-boy was proud and didn’t like to be pitied. So much so that he’d never let Ronan help him even a little. Maybe learning ASL together wouldn’t feel like pity, although Ronan’s mind had already raced ahead to whether or not Adam could afford hearing aids and whether or not he could do something about that…

“Probably. We can go to the library after school,” said Gansey.

Ronan sighed. That sounded terrible. He was definitely going to do it.

“You want to tell me why you’re learning ASL?” Gansey asked.

“It turns out Adam is my soulmate, and he’s deaf.”

“Oh, right,” said Gansey. “Who’s Adam?”

It was Saturday, and Ronan drove to Montlake. It was 4 p.m. He walked to the park carrying a book on ASL, a legal pad, and a pen.

He found Adam on the bench like always—no lunch bag this time—and Adam smiled at him shyly, like always.

Ronan signed, _hi Adam_—the only thing he’d learned so far.

“Hi,” said Adam, smiling wider.

This time, Ronan sat down right next to him instead of on the other bench. Adam reached out, and they hugged.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” said Adam. His voice was quieter and rougher than in the dream world. “You don’t look like I expected.”

Ronan wrote on his pad—_you said I was handsome though._

Adam blushed and rolled his eyes.

_I brought you something. I thought maybe we could learn together._

He handed Adam the book. Adam thumbed through it for a minute and then smiled up at Ronan. This was a different smile—not the shy one, but a wide, loose, delighted smile. Ronan was almost certain he’d seen it before in dreams.

The book earned him another hug. “This is the best possible response,” said Adam, still so quiet. “I was so afraid you’d be weird about it—which actually has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. Thank you.”

Ronan stopped himself from writing, _this is nothing. I would do anything for you._ He went with the equally honest, _doesn’t mean I don’t want to dropkick your parents into the next state._

Adam winced but said, “I get that.”

To try to diffuse the awkwardness, Ronan wrote, _Gansey says online tutorials might be more helpful._

And that earned him another smile. “You told Gansey about me?”

_Of course._

After that Adam took him by the hand and said, “Let’s go to my place.” Ronan really liked the sound of that, so he let Adam lead him a couple of streets over to a small church. Adam apparently rented the tiny apartment above it. Ronan had to duck to come inside because of the sloping roof. “It’s not much,” Adam said sheepishly as Ronan looked around. “I did clean because I hoped you’d be coming over.”

Ronan wrote, _I like it. Cozy._ Honestly, it was a little drab, but he wasn’t going to say that. He wrote the other thing he was thinking. _You’re really brave to be living on your own._

“It seemed like my only choice at a certain point,” said Adam. Then he shook himself like he was trying to get rid of that thought. He stepped closer to Ronan and in a much more seductive tone of voice said, “I brought you up here because I want to kiss you without anyone staring.”

“Okay,” said Ronan. He’d forgotten to write it down, but clearly Adam understood anyway. He took both of Ronan’s hands and leaned in. The kiss was like Ronan had thought it might be in a dream. Barely-there. Ronan gathered Adam’s hands to his chest so Adam would come closer still. Their lips met again. Nothing insubstantial about this second kiss. Ronan’s stomach was roller-coastering and his skin was on fire and Adam’s lips were so, so soft. He could feel Adam’s hunger, matching his own and then surpassing it. 

At some point, they ended up on Adam’s bed, tangled together. Ronan had a fistful of the soft white t-shirt Adam wore under his coveralls. He was kissing Adam’s neck and murmuring in his ear— _“Adam, Adam.”_

“Say it again,” said Adam. Ronan did. “I can feel that,” said Adam. “I can feel you saying my name.” And then, a moment later, as Ronan explored Adam’s collarbones— “I feel like my head’s full of white, fuzzy light.”

Ronan reached for the notepad, abandoned on the floor, so he could write it out, _I feel the same way._

They stayed on the bed for a long time, kissing off and on. When Ronan got hungry, he asked, _are there any good pizza places around here?_ He talked Adam into letting him buy them a pizza and bring it back to the apartment—but not without effort. He wasn’t really surprised when Adam fought him on it. “I’m paying next time,” Adam insisted.

They sat on Adam’s floor and ate straight out of the box. And they talked. It felt like always—familiar, comfortable. Just a bit slower than in dreams, with Ronan writing all his replies. They flipped through the ASL book and practiced some of the gestures. Ronan told Adam about Gansey’s quest and about meeting Noah. Adam told him about work and school and his ambitions for the future. Some of it, Ronan already knew, but it was so much better to hear when he knew he was wide awake. It was so much better because he knew when he would see Adam again—as soon and as often as possible.

When it was late, Adam didn’t ask him to stay. He just pulled Ronan into bed with him for the second time and didn’t let go. They fell asleep.

Ronan was in his dream forest, and he walked until he came to a sprawling tree with twisted arms. His dream-boy was sitting underneath, waiting for him.

“Adam,” he said.

“Hi.” Adam took his hand, and Ronan sat down, and they kissed again.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that Pynch meeting in dreams has already been done quite a bit, but I hope this still feels fresh. Also, let’s pretend that soulmate quote (by Robert Brault) is a little older than it actually is. 
> 
> The title is from the song Hiding Tonight by Alex Turner.
> 
> I'm magicienetreveur on Tumblr if you wanna chat!


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